Equine Slaughterhouses (CCTV)

James Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I believe that CCTV protects animals and workers in slaughterhouses and public confidence in the meat produced there. All those things are important. We have a real issue in relation to CCTV and public confidence. There is concern at present that horse welfare is not protected during the process, perhaps because of the particularly sensitive nature of horses. Specific characteristics of equines can make them vulnerable. For instance, they are “fight or flight” animals; when frightened, they seek to flee, and they become panicked or aggressive if they are not handled competently. They are sensitive and highly social herd creatures, and it is a legal requirement for them not to be killed in sight of other horses. Let us not forget that horses, unlike agricultural livestock, have been bred for hundreds of generations to interact with people. That is part of their behaviour pattern and is one of the reasons why we love them—those of us who keep them.

It can be the horse owners themselves who take their horse to slaughter, and that horse may have been a companion to them for many years. Society expects horse owners to feel an emotional attachment to their animals. The horse owner will want—perhaps more than most—a guarantee that the welfare of their horse will be protected at the abattoir, and they will want other horse owners not to judge them for ending their horse’s life in this way, which means that we need to ensure that the abattoir is, and is seen to be, a humane end-of-life option.

Will CCTV provide such a guarantee? On its own, of course it will not, as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the FSA, the Farm Animal Welfare Committee, the British Meat Processors Association and many others have said. CCTV is but one of many tools to help safeguard welfare. It should be seen not as a replacement for on-site monitoring, but as support for it. Official veterinarians work in every slaughterhouse across England and Wales and make regular unannounced checks on live animals at slaughter to ensure that their welfare is safeguarded.

The FSA’s veterinary audit team checks compliance. However, no single person can monitor the whole slaughter process—from animals held in lairage, through to being led to the stun box or slaughter area, through to the actual killing. CCTV that is in constant operation, placed to cover all live horse areas, such as the unloading, lairage and so forth, provides a record of the entire process and of the animals’ experience throughout.

As I have said, CCTV could have great benefits for the slaughterhouse operator, who is responsible for ensuring the welfare of animals while on the premises. Operators would be able to monitor and assess whether their staff were complying with the law. They would also have evidence to disprove spurious allegations of malpractice. In that respect, CCTV protects slaughterhouse workers and owners, and furthermore, it can be used for staff training and development. A European slaughterhouse told World Horse Welfare that CCTV was invaluable for staff training purposes.

The most common rebuttal of mandatory CCTV is cost. However, the costs, as the Minister explained in a debate on the issue last year, are “relatively modest”. CCTV systems can be purchased for less than £1,000 and many slaughterhouses already have the systems in place to monitor the exterior of their premises for security reasons, so why not inside as well?

To provide genuine transparency and engender confidence, the footage should be available to authorities. No law currently requires CCTV footage from slaughterhouses to be shared with official vets or the FSA, whose role is to monitor welfare at slaughter. For the use of CCTV to be effective, that must change. Mandatory CCTV in equine slaughterhouses must be legislated for in tandem with a requirement for footage to be made available to those authorities. Only that will truly deliver the transparency that the public need and expect.

What is the state of play? The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has said that it wishes to encourage a voluntary approach to installing CCTV. The Welsh Government have also indicated that they support the use of CCTV in slaughterhouses in Wales, but have failed to legislate to make it mandatory. It is clear that that approach is not working. The FSA, in its board report of 21 September this year, confirmed that take-up of CCTV had “plateaued” at 49% in red meat slaughterhouses. When slaughterhouses have CCTV, it might not be placed in areas which allow them to monitor horse welfare. We need a mandatory approach.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

No horse lover could possibly disagree with the general thrust of the hon. Lady’s arguments; of course it is right that we should have CCTV where that can be done. However, only 5,000 horses a year are killed in abattoirs, of the 75,000 or 100,000 that are killed. Is there not a risk that if she focuses all her attention on persuading the Government to introduce primary legislation—an extremely difficult thing to do—she would be ignoring the horse welfare issues associated with the other 95,000?

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I agree with the thrust of the hon. Gentleman’s arguments but perhaps the fact that, at present, so few horses travel through slaughterhouses to the end of their lives is, in itself, a welfare issue. If more horse owners, and the horse-keeping society as a whole, were more confident that that approach was appropriate, perhaps the number of horses doing that, in turn, would increase.

Let me return to the state of play. Another DEFRA approach has been to say that consumer and retailer pressure, as opposed to legislation, should be the means used to encourage the greater use of CCTV. DEFRA cites the fact that most major food retailers—I will not list them, but it is all the major supermarkets—now insist on the use of CCTV in supply chain slaughterhouses, and there are many assurance schemes, such as RSPCA Assured. However—this is pertinent—that consumer-pressure approach will not work for horses, because horse meat is rarely sold or eaten in the United Kingdom. Most of the horse meat that we produce is sold on the continent, mostly to wholesalers, so consumer and retailer pressure is not applicable.

In conclusion, I hope that the case for making CCTV mandatory in the UK’s equine slaughterhouses is clear. The current voluntary approach will not deliver that. Horse owners do not have confidence that abattoirs will protect horse welfare throughout the process. There is neither transparency nor accountability in the system for horses—just the memory of the horrific covert footage from 2013. The losers in this state of affairs are not just the horses, but horse owners, retailers and the general public, who all suffer from the negative consequences of bad practice and low confidence in equine slaughterhouses. I therefore urge the Minister to do all that he can to provide a system that ensures high standards of welfare and instils greater confidence in the sector by exploring a mandatory requirement for CCTV in equine slaughterhouses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) on introducing this extremely important debate in such a professional and sensible way. It might seem odd, but I have not disagreed with a single word that she or any other speaker has said in this debate. Incidentally, before I forget, I declare that I, too, am an honorary member of the British Veterinary Association. I am also a member of the Countryside Alliance and I own a variety of horses, and have done so for many years. It is true to say that there is no correlation between richness and owning horses. Indeed, I have discovered over the years that owning horses is what makes one poor. I have had a rather large number of horses at one time or another.

I have also had the experience of taking horses to slaughter, and there can be no more terrible event in one’s life than to take to its death an animal with which one has had a day-to-day working relationship for many, many years—I am sure the same applies to dogs and cats, too. I strongly support the thrust of what has been said by all the speakers, especially the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) a moment ago. Their points are absolutely correct, and I strongly support World Horse Welfare’s campaign to introduce compulsory CCTV in abattoirs, of which there can be no doubt.

I hope that those who feel strongly about this subject will forgive me if I raise a couple of issues that I hope will not detract from the strength of the campaign, but that none the less need careful consideration. The first, which was touched on by the hon. Lady for Northern Ireland (Lady Hermon), is that there have been remarkably few prosecutions, even where there is compulsory CCTV. I am ashamed to say that one of the biggest prosecutions was of that dreadful man from west London called James Gray. I assure the House that he is absolutely no relation; none the less, it was an appalling case.

The question is whether introducing compulsory CCTV in the small number of abattoirs that kill horses would necessarily have a significant effect. My concern is that this might be one of those occasions where we make a huge effort to introduce regulation or new legislation that has little effect and might, on the contrary, assuage our concerns and make us feel that we have done something when what we have done is actually relatively inconsequential.

[Sir Roger Gale]

I seek not to be mischievous, but does my hon. Friend concede that it is just possible that there are so few prosecutions of places with CCTV cameras precisely because the cameras are having the deterrent effect that we seek?

[Mr Gray]

That is possible, of course, but it is hard to work out the cause and effect. In the case of horses, I suspect that it is probably because, depending on the statistics we use, only 4,000 or 5,000 are slaughtered each year in up to five abattoirs—there are none in Wales or Scotland. In other words, something in the order of 1,000 horses are slaughtered per equine abattoir spread over 50 weeks. A very small number of horses are being killed in licensed abattoirs today, and therefore there is no presumption that any of them is carrying out anything other than the highest possible standards of slaughter.

[Angela Smith]

The hon. Gentleman is generous in giving way, given that I have just delivered my speech. It is a mistake to assume that the five abattoirs kill an equal number of horses, because they do not. The numbers are very uneven. The FSA’s figures show that the best records and CCTV coverage are sometimes to be found in smaller abattoirs.

[Mr Gray]

The statistical point that I was making was not whether the same number were killed in each of the five abattoirs; it was that a relatively small number are killed across the whole of England. As far as I am aware, there is also little evidence of anything other than high standards in the abattoirs that do kill horses. We must not start by presuming that they are all bad people doing wicked things. They are not, necessarily; many of them are extremely professional abattoirs doing good things, so let us not start from the presumption that they are bad.

There is a bigger gap in the campaign that we are discussing. I think I am right in saying that the only horses that go to abattoirs are those going into the food chain, which in the UK is a relatively small number. If we presume that there are between 1 million and 1.5 million horses in the UK today, that means that 75,000 or 100,000 die every year in one way or another. Of those, only a tiny proportion go into the food chain. Again, my concern about the campaign is that we would be assuring ourselves that we were doing something terribly important about the euthanising of horses, whereas in fact we would be dealing with an extremely small proportion of those that are killed or die every year, and there may well be other abuses elsewhere that we could more usefully spend our time addressing.

That brings us to the question of horse passports. It must be remembered that the only horses that can be presented at an abattoir are those with up-to-date horse passports, in which no veterinary medicine appears. Nearly all horses, especially low-grade horses, will have had some form of veterinary medicine during the course of their life, particularly bute, which rules them out for presentation at an equine slaughterhouse.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is time that the Government introduced the national equine database to check all horses to ensure that their passports are correct and have the right information?

[Mr Gray]

My hon. Friend tempts me down a corridor that is not directly relevant to this debate. I take exactly the opposite view, which is that we should abolish passports and the database, relying only on some form of documentation for those horses presented to be eaten, to prove that they are fit for human consumption. All other horses and equines need no form of documentation to prove that. At the moment, of course, every zebra and vicar’s donkey is required to have a horse passport, merely in order to allow that small number of horses to go through abattoirs every year. That is a disproportionate bureaucratic solution to a very small problem.

The point that I am making is this. An extraordinarily small number of horses go through the abattoir. The only ones allowed to do so are those that have never had any form of medication. Therefore, many of the worst horses, in welfare terms—wilder, cheaper or less valued ponies—are unable to get into the abattoir, even supposing that it does have CCTV. We in this place often do things to make ourselves feel better. We are concerned about the end of life for horses; of course we are worried about it, and quite right too. Of course we are concerned that abattoirs should apply the highest possible standards, and it is absolutely right that we should take steps to ensure that they do.

However, my concern is that in concentrating solely on that, we are concentrating on a tiny part of the problem of horse welfare. A far bigger problem is the number of dumped horses and wild horses; we do not know where they are or what to do about them. This is a tiny problem, and we do not even know that it really is one. If we were to use our primary legislation to solve something that might or might not really be a problem, we would be fooling ourselves that we had done something useful.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

CCTV has a dual purpose. First, it ensures that the slaughter of animals is done correctly. Secondly, it also ensures that slaughterhouse personnel have done it correctly—the proof is in the CCTV footage. Is there not a dual purpose? It protects both the slaughterhouse and the staff.

[Mr Gray]

That is, of course, correct, but it applies only to the tiny proportion of horses that go to the slaughterhouse. That is the point that I am making; only a very small number are killed in equine slaughterhouses. There is no protection whatever for horses killed by the knackerman, although contrary to what somebody said a moment ago, most of the knackermen that I have met are extremely professional animal lovers; the notion that they are bloodthirsty murderers is incorrect. By far the biggest professionals of all in terms of killing horses are at local hunt kennels, where people feel strongly about horses and know more about them than almost anybody else. Hunt kennels provide a fantastic resource for the countryside by slaughtering horses at the end of their lives.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s argument that many horses might not be reached by a scheme, as they are not passported, but I refer him to my speech, in which I mentioned that horse owners who are concerned about the welfare of their horses, who have passports and who know whether bute has been used or not are a particular cohort of people whom we should address by making slaughterhouses as accessible to them as possible as an alternative.

[Mr Gray]

I agree. Of course there are responsible, sensible, grown-up horse owners who would prefer their horse to go into the food chain, although I must say that I am not certain that I want my horse to be eaten. I would much prefer my horses to be burned, or buried in some instances. I am not certain that taking them to the abattoir to be turned into horse meat and sold in supermarkets across the continent is what I personally would want to happen, even though I believe that I am a reasonably responsible horse owner. However, my concern is not so much the people like us who are responsible and who understand about veterinary medicines and all that; it is about the hundreds of thousands of other horses that are not owned by responsible owners, that would not be taken to abattoirs and that have had veterinary medicines. They are the horses towards which we must address our concerns.

All I am saying is that the minimum—proper standards in the abattoir—must not be the enemy of the best. Although I support this particular campaign—it is a good idea, and we must find a way to ensure that there are no abuses in our equine slaughterhouses—I ask the Minister not to use it as an excuse for not doing something about the much bigger problem of the large number of horses that are unwanted, dumped on other people’s land or used in the extremely inhumane horse trade. There are a whole variety of welfare problems that this small matter would not necessarily solve.

[Lady Hermon]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to correct the record by clarifying one point. He referred to me as “the hon. Lady for Northern Ireland”—I am the hon. Member for North Down—and quoted me as apparently supporting the idea that the low number of prosecutions was evidence that CCTV was not working. Quite the opposite: I think that CCTV should be comprehensive throughout the entire slaughterhouse, and that Food Standards Agency staff should have compulsory and easy access to all the footage. That was my point. That would make horse slaughterhouses much more effective.

[Mr Gray]

I know that the hon. Member for North Down will forgive me if I inadvertently misquoted her; of course we understood that she meant that we prefer to have CCTV in all slaughterhouses. If some remark of mine made her feel that I had not understood that point, I apologise. My concern is simply that by introducing legislation that is the least we can—

[Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Gray]

If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I am quite keen to hear what the Minister has to say, but of course.

[Christina Rees]

I definitely do not want the hon. Gentleman’s horses to be eaten. I watched a TV documentary on slaughterhouses as a teenager, and it turned me into a vegan; I have not eaten meat all my life. I support the campaign, because I think that any exposure of slaughterhouses would be beneficial, and I support CCTV cameras in—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Lady is making a speech, not asking a question of the hon. Member speaking.

[Mr Gray]

I accept what the hon. Lady says. A couple of experiences that I have had in slaughterhouses over the years have nearly made me, the biggest beef-eater in Parliament, a vegan. It is a revolting sight, and I would certainly not want to see my horse taken there and slaughtered. However, she makes an extremely good point, which is that the only horses that go to horse slaughterhouses are those destined for the food chain. Other horses do not. Ninety-five per cent of horses are not destined for the food chain, and could not go there. There is a bigger issue. I always argue that we ought to abolish equine slaughterhouses in the UK altogether, thereby sending no meat at all into the human food chain, although I accept the animal welfare downside to that as well: where would those ponies and horses then go?

My message to the Minister is that we must avoid making one thing that we do—introducing compulsory CCTV into slaughterhouses—the enemy of the best. We must address the huge animal welfare concerns about horses, particularly about the large number of unwanted horses abandoned across our land, which is growing as we speak. Those horses will never go anywhere near an equine slaughterhouse, and the provision of CCTV in such slaughterhouses will therefore not help them even slightly at the end of their lives.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say, and congratulate the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd on obtaining the debate. I hope that she does not feel that I have in any way lessened the thrust of her argument, which was very powerful. None the less, I hope that one result of this afternoon’s debate will be that the Government begin to listen and think more carefully about the wider welfare issues that affect horses across our nation.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

No; the number would be far higher than that. I will have to write to the hon. Lady to confirm the figures, but the figure of 61 is for only one of the slaughterhouses—the one in Lincolnshire.

[Mr James Gray]

The Minister mentioned that in the past 12 months only 32 horses were killed in abattoirs with no CCTV; is he aware of any reason to presume that those 32 were killed under anything other than 100% humane circumstances?

[George Eustice]

The feedback we have had from the Food Standards Agency’s official veterinarians and reports is that it has not encountered any particular problems or concerns about the welfare of horses at slaughter. We should also note that the number of horses slaughtered at abattoirs in the UK has been in steady decline since 2012, when 8,426 horses were slaughtered. That fell to 5,000 by 2013, and in this past year it is down to just 3,280. That partly reflects a changing view among owners about the end-of-life choices that they have for their horses. It also reflects, as several hon. Members have said, how people are increasingly choosing to have their horses euthanised.

I want to talk about the meat of this debate, which is CCTV. As many hon. Members have said today, CCTV can and does play a useful role. Last year, the Farm Animal Welfare Committee published an interesting report that detailed the positive benefits of CCTV to slaughterhouse operators and those monitoring and verifying compliance with welfare standards. The benefits go much wider than any deterrent effect, and include, for instance, more accurate ante-mortem inspection in the lairage—for example, sheep often mask lameness if stressed when a stockman or vet is present, but behave normally under remote observation.

Another benefit is that CCTV can be a valuable training tool for operatives to encourage sensitive and sympathetic behaviour towards animals, and it can enable the spotting of any bad practices that could result in incidents or near misses. It can also allow the observation of activities in small or confined spaces that it would otherwise be difficult for the official veterinarian to observe. As the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals briefing for the debate also illustrates, it can be of use to operators and audit schemes in providing assurance that good practice and legal requirements are followed.

The Government understand the desire for the use of CCTV in all slaughterhouses, although we are yet to be convinced that it should be a mandatory requirement. I do, though, understand the calls for the Government to go further by introducing legislation to require slaughterhouses to have CCTV installed, and that official veterinarians should have unfettered access to CCTV footage. As I have made clear previously, the Government have never ruled out further action, and we keep the matter under review. I shall ensure that my noble Friend Lord Gardiner, who now has responsibility for the relevant part of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs portfolio, is made aware of the points made today. We will, of course, consider them all carefully.

It is important to highlight one other important point about CCTV made by the FAWC, which is that it is at its most powerful when used as a tool for food business operators to manage their operations and staff and to help with training. There is one area of caution here: CCTV cannot be a substitute for responsible food business operators, and nor can it replace the role of official veterinarians. If it is used, it is preferable that it is used because food business operators really want it and want to use it to improve the management of their operation. In considering legislation, we need to be careful that we do not inadvertently change the culture and thereby lose out on all the benefits from CCTV highlighted by the FAWC. It is for that reason that the Government have encouraged the voluntary take-up of CCTV in slaughterhouses, and will continue to do so.

It might help if I clarify the current situation concerning CCTV in slaughterhouses generally. The latest FSA survey figures show that in Great Britain 92% of cattle, 96% of pig, 88% of sheep and 99% of poultry throughput is currently from premises with CCTV. As the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) pointed out, the number of slaughterhouses with CCTV installed has been at the same level for the past couple of years. The numbers of high-throughput slaughterhouses with CCTV reflects the fact that, although the installation of CCTV in slaughterhouses is currently voluntary, it is also a requirement of many retailers and food assurance schemes. I acknowledge that many of the medium and smaller slaughterhouses have not yet installed CCTV. Many operators who have installed CCTV say that it is a positive training tool, so we would like to consider the issue to ensure that we get greater uptake of CCTV installation.

I shall briefly address some of the issues mentioned by hon. Members. The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd talked about EU law. She is right that the initial intention of the great repeal Bill is that existing EU regulations will be put on to a UK legal basis, but I should point out that there is currently nothing in EU law that would prevent us from legislating to introduce mandatory CCTV if we so wished. This also relates to a point made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon). I do not intend to blame the EU and say that we cannot do it because it is not required; it is not required under EU law, but there is nothing in EU law that would prohibit it.

The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd also mentioned the cost. I have said in previous debates that the cost is indeed modest. She said that it can be under £1,000, and it can be for single cameras, as I have pointed out previously. However, when the FAWC looked into the cost, it estimated that for most abattoirs the cost of installing CCTV in the areas that people would want covered, which would require several cameras and additional monitoring systems, would be £3,000 to £10,000. As I have said previously and will say again, though, that is a relatively modest cost.

[Mr James Gray]

Does the Minister accept that there is a risk that the number of abattoirs killing horses and the number of horses killed in abattoirs might well decline further if CCTV is made compulsory? Many abattoir owners will simply say, “Why bother with horses?”, because they are a huge hassle anyhow and the carcass value is very low. Is there not at least a risk that the small number of abattoirs will become smaller?

[George Eustice]

There is another, wider point. This debate is focused specifically on CCTV at the point of horses’ slaughter, but all five of the slaughterhouses that are licensed to slaughter horses also slaughter other animals. The reality is that, were anybody to consider measures on CCTV, I am not sure there would be a specific reason to single out those abattoirs licensed for horses. I think that if someone was going to install CCTV, they would take a broader view, across all species, because the principles involved are broadly the same for each species.

The final point that I will make on the speech of the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd relates to her claim that in the case of horse abattoirs there is not retail pressure. I think she is missing a point here, as all five abattoirs also slaughter other animals—other farm livestock. That is probably why three of the five already have CCTV.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) has been a long-standing campaigner on a wide range of animal welfare issues. He made a separate legislative point, saying that if there is not time for primary legislation to address this issue, perhaps the Government should give a fair wind to a private Member’s Bill. Obviously, private Member’s Bills are an issue for the House and for private Members; it is open to anyone at any time to bring one forward. However, I am not sure that we would need primary legislation if we decided to address this issue. Potentially it could be dealt with under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which has quite wide provisions to deal with these types of things. Nevertheless, I take on board his point, and if any Back Bencher wanted to introduce such legislation, they could obviously do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz Saville Roberts]

Diolch yn fawr iawn—thank you very much, Mrs Main, for giving me the opportunity to close this debate.

I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to this debate this afternoon. I think that I need to put on the record, as I have heard everybody else doing so, that I have been an honorary member of the British Veterinary Association for about three weeks or so. It is important that I record that.

Listening to the speeches, the general thrust was to do the best that we can for the welfare of horses, and of domestic and agricultural animals more widely. I particularly welcome the support from the hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, and also his comment that the cost of CCTV need not be prohibitive.

I also welcome the comments of the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), who mentioned the “invisible horse”, referring to the fact that there are many animals out there that are effectively not seen by anybody. It is very easy for an animal that is kept, say, in a field simply to disappear from sight; although we are concerned for its welfare, we are not really in a position to know much about what is happening to them.

I agree with the concern of the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) about the wider issue with horse welfare. I understand that there are almost 800,000 horses in the United Kingdom, although we do not know how many there really are, and a great many horses are owned by people who, in all honesty, are not interested in any aspect of their welfare. Although I feel strongly that CCTV would improve the welfare of horses in certain circumstances, we should not fool ourselves that CCTV in itself would resolve all the problems for horses. I share the hon. Gentleman’s discomfort with the idea that horses are meat animals. None the less, the fact that, although they are not meat animals, they are still large herbivores in itself affects their life experience.

Turning to the contribution of the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Dr Monaghan), of course, Scotland and Wales are in the same situation; we do not have licensed equine slaughterhouses. That means that horse owners in Wales or Scotland have to travel outside our nations if they wish to use those facilities.

It is important that all the nations of the United Kingdom set standards for each other. Wales passed the Control of Horses (Wales) Act 2014, which dealt with fly-grazing; previous to that being dealt with in England. Interestingly enough, only a certain number of authorities have used those enabling powers. I suspect that is partly because some of them do not want to be seen to be responsible for the death of horses that come under their control, which is part of the irony of our relationship with horses. In welfare terms, we perhaps need to address that irony.

Finally, I turn to the contribution by the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon). She summarised the views of many in this House by saying that the welfare of animals in slaughterhouses is of paramount concern to the public. I very much welcome some of the Minister’s comments. I noted his comments that CCTV has a useful role to play; that it can make evident concealed injuries, such as lameness, which animals conceal when they are under stress and feel that they are being observed; that it can be used for training; and that it can be used in particular when it is difficult to gain access to smaller spaces.

I noticed the subtleties of the Minister’s comment that he perhaps remains to be convinced about CCTV but that he has never ruled out further action. He also said that this issue could be dealt with by a private Member’s Bill or a statutory instrument arising from the Animal Welfare Act 2016, which was certainly an interesting comment. I hope that he will commit to consider that matter further in future.

Of course, CCTV is not a substitute for responsible work practices or the presence of official veterinarians. Nevertheless, there is a strong feeling that it contributes to and enhances welfare. As for making CCTV mandatory, we have been talking about equines today but that could also apply—well, it should apply—to all other agricultural animals. The time has come to deal with this issue, and there are strong feelings about that.

I will close by saying that many little girls aspire to own their first My Little Pony and then to own the real thing—

[Mr James Gray]

And little boys.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

And little boys, possibly. I am talking for myself and my own daughters; forgive me. However, horses are not necessarily well served if they are regarded an aspirational status symbol. They are neither an agricultural animal nor a visible family pet. They can be dumped, “invisible” and uncared for, in barns or fields. They can be cheap to buy; indeed, they can easily be free to acquire. The costs of worming them and maintaining their feet can be prohibitive for people who might find it easy to acquire them, and their value disappears after they reach a certain age.

Mandatory CCTV and ensuring access to CCTV footage will improve the reality of horse welfare, and indeed that of all animals sent to slaughterhouses, and I hope that we can address this issue further in the future. Thanks very much—diolch yn fawr iawn.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered CCTV in equine slaughterhouses.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Gray Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

Climate change is baked into every aspect of this Department’s work. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the risk assessment conducted in 2012 on climate change adaptation focused specifically on flood risk, but he is correct that there are other issues we need to look at—and look at relentlessly—which is why we look forward to providing a full response to the assessment provided by the climate change adaptation sub-committee.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

There can be no question about it: it does cost more to live in rural areas compared with urban areas, so I very much welcome the reduction in fuel duty, the cap on petrol prices and equalising the council tax. All these things are extremely helpful, but transport must be central to this. Twenty-five per cent. of people in my constituency do not have cars. Will the Minister take steps to look into community bus services, such as Bradies taxis, which I launched last week in my constituency? They are at the end of a telephone and will go and pick people up from their rural locations.

[Rory Stewart]

My hon. Friend is a great champion of the issues of rural areas. The Department for Transport launched an interesting scheme towards the end of the last Parliament to provide support for community transport schemes. If he wishes to discuss it in more detail, I would encourage the council to apply to the Department for Transport for that fund.